We know the cake in the oven is done when a skewer or knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Wish somebody had done the same with Ki & Ka. If only director R Balki or actors Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor had cared enough to insert a fork into their half-baked muffin of a film, they would have been able to see the sloppy characters and bad writing still sticking to it!
Ki & Ka is about ‘Ki’a and ‘Ka’bir, Kareena and Arjun, respectively, where they have taken the concept of traditional gender roles and turned it on its head. The woman is a career oriented, ambitious go-getter while the husband wants to be a homemaker. An interesting premise rendered lifeless thanks to terrible execution.
Now, either Mr Balki thinks that we are all stupid or he has never heard of the term “subtlety”. The swapping of gender roles, the justifications, and connotations – everything is literal, in-your-face and explained with footnotes.
The dialogues are repetitive and the film falters as it falls into the same gender trap that it set out to critique in the first place. Kabir wants to be a stay-at-home husband but he must also showcase his macho side by making mincemeat of goons, who tease his wife. Declaring again and again that he loves whisky just reduces the whole gender equality debate into an infantile cacophony. That Kia hardly comes across as a likeable presence also doesn’t help matters.
No wonder then that nothing substantial happens in the first half apart from Kareena and Arjun trying to outdo each other in the department of “over-acting.” My favourite 10 minutes of the movie are a result of a certain superstar’s cameo. I’m not revealing the name here but this probably is the only thing to look forward to in this otherwise drab and utterly half-baked affair.
Ki & Ka left me very hungry, not just because it offered precious little cinematically but also because of the many mouthwatering dishes that Arjun Kapoor’s character whipped up. If only the story had more meat….sigh!
Anyway, I will give it 1.5 QUINTS OUT OF 5. It’s perfect if you want to only kill time!
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